There is a delightful day-glo sparkle in the new single from the Sydney supergroup The Aerial Maps, fueled by a fairground organ trill and guitars that ring out with a tremble. And it’s is all laced with a hint of wistful innocence that for many recalls the unique delights of languid, roasting Sydney summers spent on Clovelly Beach and eating potato scallops. You can almost see the bleached out vistas, smell the sunscreen and hear the seagulls.
Apt really for the arrival of the antipodean winter (and always colder in the southern outpost of Hobart where the Backseat Downunder HQ is housed), this is a blinding piece of sonic sunshine that hops, skips and pirouettes into the ears with a sense of carefree abandon.
Adam Gibson, with his hand on the tiller, says of the track:
Perhaps upending perceptions of the Aerial Maps as a band that only deals in elongated spoken-word based tales of life, love, and the land, this is a pop song that evokes the joy of summer days by the beach, but with the smell of bushfire smoke in the air hinting at wider concerns. All the band members are lovers of guitar pop and on this song we just let that love fly free.
His delivery is, as always, in the Australian vernacular, raw and expressive, with a filigree of gold added by Alannah Russack’s velvet vocals.
‘Any Summer Day’ is out now and available to download and stream through the link above and here.
Every Aerial Maps album has a theme or concept underpinning it. Their first album In The Blinding Sunlight (2008) was all about memory and a sense of nostalgia, the second The Sunset Park (2011) was a “novel in song” about crossing Australia, the third, Intimate Hinterland (2021), was about the intimate connection of people within the Australian landscape, the place where we live our lives.
‘Our Sunburnt Dream’, produced by Jim Moginie (Midnight Oil) and Ted Howard and out on 21 June 2024, is a combination of all these ideas brought together, a dreamlike vision in which personal experiences and more fictional stories are presented as a widescreen collection, all infused with the bright sunlight of Australia. Gibson says of the new album:
Things are changing in this landscape. We felt it was important to try to document how we cope with such change but also at same time celebrate our resilience and power to push onwards in the face of such changes. So this album seeks to present songs that are deeply personal but also contains stories that have a more fictional aspect, peopled by widely varying characters, with the end result being a cornucopia of ideas and situations.
The Aerial Maps are a true indie supergroup consisting of writer and vocalist Adam Gibson, the rhythm section of Mark ‘Na Na’ Hyland (bass) and Jasper Fenton (drums), and the songwriting, singing and playing of Alannah Russack (the Hummingbirds) and Peter Fenton (a key member of legendary dark rock exponents Crow and The Gin Palace). They perfectly encompass the Marrickville Sound: veteran musicians reforming and creating wonderful music again.
The Aerial Maps are:
Adam Gibson –vocals, saxophone
Alannah Russack – guitar, vocals, piano, synth
Jasper Fenton – drums, guitar
Mark “Na Na” Hyland – bass, vocals, Fender Rhodes electric piano
Peter Fenton – guitar, vocals, piano
With special guest Jim Moginie – guitar, piano, Fender Rhodes electric piano
Feature Photograph: Safari Lee
